CHAPTER XIV
MORE HALLOWTIDE BELIEFS AND CUSTOMS
Only the Celts and the Teutons celebrate an occasion actually like
our Hallowe'en. The countries of southern Europe make of it a
religious vigil, like that already described in France.
In Italy on the night of All Souls', the spirits of the dead are
thought to be abroad, as in Brittany. They may mingle with living
people, and not be remarked. The Miserere is heard in all the
cities. As the people pass dressed in black, bells are rung on
street corners to remind them to pray for the souls of the dead. In
Naples the skeletons in the funeral vaults are dressed up, and the
place visited on All Souls' Day. In Salerno before the people go to
the all-night service at church they set out a banquet for the
dead. If any food is left in the morning, evil is in store for the
house.
"Hark! Hark to the wind! 'T is the night, they say,
When all souls come back from the far away--
The dead, forgotten this many a day!
"And the dead remembered--ay! long and well--
And the little children whose spirits dwell
In God's green garden of asphodel.
"Have you reached the country of all content,
O souls we know, since the day you went
From this time-worn world, where your years were spent?
"Would you come back to the sun and the rain,
The sweetness, the strife, the thing we call pain,
And then unravel life's tangle again?
"I lean to the dark--Hush!--was it a sigh?
Or the painted vine-leaves that rustled by?
Or only a night-bird's echoing cry?"
SHEARD: Hallowe'en.
In Malta bells are rung, prayers said, and mourning worn on All
Souls' Day. Graves are decorated, and the inscriptions on tombs
read and reread. For the poor is prepared an All Souls' dinner, as
cakes are given to the poor in England and Wales. The custom of
decorating graves with flowers and offering flowers to the dead
comes from the crowning of the dead by the ancients with
short-lived blooms, to signify the brevity of life.
In Spain at dark on Hallowe'en cakes and nuts are laid on graves to
bribe the spirits not to disturb the vigils of the saints.
In Germany the graves of the dead are decorated with flowers and
lights, on the first and second of November. To drive away ghosts
from a church a key or a wand must be struck three times against a
bier. An All Souls' divination in Germany is a girl's going out and
asking the first young man she meets his name. Her husband's will
be like it. If she walks thrice about a church and makes a wish,
she will see it fulfilled.
Belgian children build shrines in front of their homes with
figures of the Madonna and candles, and beg for money to buy cakes.
As many cakes as one eats, so many souls he frees from Purgatory.
The races of northern Europe believed that the dead returned, and
were grieved at the lamentations of their living relatives. The
same belief was found in Brittany, and among the American Indians.
"Think of this, O Hiawatha!
Speak of it to all the people,
That henceforward and forever
They no more with lamentations
Sadden souls of the departed
In the Islands of the Blessed."
LONGFELLOW: Hiawatha.
The Chinese fear the dead and the dragons of the air. They devote
the first three weeks in April to visiting the graves of their
ancestors, and laying baskets of offerings on them. The great
dragon, Feng-Shin, flies scattering blessings upon the houses. His
path is straight, unless he meets with some building. Then he turns
aside, and the owner of the too lofty edifice misses the blessing.
At Nikko, Japan, where there are many shrines to the spirits of the
dead, masques are held to entertain the ghosts who return on
Midsummer Day. Every street is lined with lighted lanterns, and the
spirits are sent back to the otherworld in straw boats lit with
lanterns, and floated down the river. To see ghosts in Japan one
must put one hundred rush-lights into a large lantern, and repeat
one hundred lines of poetry, taking one light out at the end of
each line; or go out into the dark with one light and blow it out.
Ghosts are identified with witches. They come back especially on
moonlit nights.
"On moonlight nights, when the coast-wind whispers in the
branches of the tree, O-Matsue and Teoyo may sometimes be seen,
with bamboo rakes in their hands, gathering together the needles
of the fir."
RINDER: Great Fir-Tree of Takasago.
There is a Chinese saying that a mirror is the soul of a woman. A
pretty story is told of a girl whose mother before she died gave
her a mirror, saying:
"Now after I am dead, if you think longingly of me, take out the
thing that you will find inside this box, and look at it. When you
do so my spirit will meet yours, and you will be comforted." When
she was lonely or her stepmother was harsh with her, the girl went
to her room and looked earnestly into the mirror. She saw there
only her own face, but it was so much like her mother's that she
believed it was hers indeed, and was consoled. When the stepmother
learned what it was her daughter cherished so closely, her heart
softened toward the lonely girl, and her life was made easier.
By the Arabs spirits were called Djinns (or genii). They came from
fire, and looked like men or beasts. They might be good or evil,
beautiful or horrible, and could disappear from mortal sight at
will. Nights when they were abroad, it behooved men to stay under
cover.
"Ha! They are on us, close without!
Shut tight the shelter where we lie;
With hideous din the monster rout,
Dragon and vampire, fill the sky."
HUGO: The Djinns.
